hmm interesting vid

Ean saw the awful button technique in the MIDI Fighter contest and decided to create a basic tutorial =)
By the way, the BCD2000 buttons are rigid and may cause a pain on the wrist

Great info and presentation of the info – it’s very cool that you take the time to go below the surface. Awesome example for types of things to think about that support improving technique

The Ohm64 buttons don’t bounce like the arcade buttons – they’re still rad tho. Cheers

Good video. I used to practice the crab on my desk back in high school all day, teacher went mad. It’s a lot easier with buttons than with a crossfader, though, since they bounce back up…
Way to go!

nice video, fits into the last one you did with your drummer friend :)

aaaaaand if you had ended this video with “practice and n’joy” you’d be in trouble with copy rights :D

Nice video. Now time for me to practice.

As much as I love this type of DJing evolution I must ask…

Am I the only one who cringes at the horrible sound of the clickedy clack of the arcade buttons?

I’ve been wanting to upgrade my VCI for a long time now but I just can’t seem to bring myself to transition from my super sexy tight click click original buttons to that perverted long distance pressing of the arcade buttons.

I keep thinking it’s like firm perky boobs in comparison to saggy flabby boobs.

Dam I long for arcade buttons, two and three finger crabs look sooo much easyer. As a capable scratch dj I don’t find crabing on the standard buttons that hard but after 2 mins it really bloody hurts, there is one cool thing you can do with the standard buttons that would be hard on arcade buttons, curl a finger up with the face of your nail half on top of a button and half on the vci face plate, then rub your nail across the button making sure you press the button down until you get to the other side of the button and then repeat action back and fourth, when done quickly this equal’s a real continued rapid fire effect, great for drum & bass style hi hats. But again it does hurt after a while and take’s a lot of practice to get it neat.

@Beatsnatcher:
hello, have a look in the forum, one guy did a thread where he moded his arcade buttons with some “foam” inserted inside (can’t remember exactly what it was)to reduce greatly the click of those.

wish my v7s buttons were a little looser for this reason, i have to slam them every time..

So now we not only have turntablism but buttonism as well, how fun XD!!

At the end i thought ean was going to pull an elaskins and say practice N enjoy haha. Great vid, cant wait to get my VCI100 arcade and practice with those bad boys.

[quote comment="36055"]
I keep thinking it’s like firm perky boobs in comparison to saggy flabby boobs.[/quote]
With a name like yours no wonder you cant keep thinking about it.

and most people here probally prefer the saggy flabby natural boobs compared to the plastic fake ones

a good way to practice would be to actually play street fighter with an arcade stick ;p

seriously though, that would probably help alot with finger dexterity.

Some clarification/help in counting, triplets are subdivided (counted) “1-ple-it, 2-ple-it, 3-ple-it, 4-ple-it” that is for eighth note triplets. Sixteenth notes are subdivided (counted) “1-e-and-uh, 2-e-and-uh, 3-e-and-uh, 4-e-and-uh”. Eighth notes are subdivided (counted) “1-and, 2-and, 3-and, 4-and”. If you notice, the numbers are the beat in the measure. The words between are to be said IN TIME between one beat and the next. Proper technique AND tempo are what make all of this work. Unfortunately, you cant trade one for the other.

No ofense to anyone, but Ean,. really!? If people need to be told how to push a button so that it is on time to a beat,… well then they maybe should be told to look for another creative outlet.

Your either trying VERY hard to make EVRYONE a good DJ or trying to make this button masher DJ style go all the way.

[quote comment="36076"]No ofense to anyone, but Ean,. really!? If people need to be told how to push a button so that it is on time to a beat,… well then they maybe should be told to look for another creative outlet.

Your either trying VERY hard to make EVRYONE a good DJ or trying to make this button masher DJ style go all the way.[/quote]

This is more about controllerism as an expressive instrument. When playing an instrument there are certain fundamentals that help everything else.

I cant teach someone timing, but these principles really helped my creative playing so I thought they might help you.

[quote comment="36075"]Some clarification/help in counting, triplets are subdivided (counted) “1-ple-it, 2-ple-it, 3-ple-it, 4-ple-it” that is for eighth note triplets. Sixteenth notes are subdivided (counted) [/quote]

Thanks for the info- I had never heard triplets counted out like that before.

Good tips. I’ve got the buttons and the diodes, just haven’t done the mod yet. I did pull the buttons out the other day so I think it’s pretty close to happening.

i took 6 years of classical guitar and a lot of what you’re saying, whether you know it or not, is a lot of the same in guitar technique
it’s a little weird but it’s true, you’re buttons and sliders are your instrument and you need to know your way around it, + with more practice comes more daring moves which will lead to inovation!
great vid

@ Ean
Great vid bro. I just wanna thank you for staying so positive all the time. Every time i scroll down a post and read the comments i always cringe at a few ungrateful instigators ( not really so much on this post or at least not yet). This vid did help me a lot, and hopefully were gonna see that mixing technique tutorial part 2 with some ADVANCED mixing pretty soon???

damn i need arcade buttons. EAN is there any way to make arcade button holes in my VCI-se.The soldering i can do my self. Here on Bonaire we have no CNC machines or laser cutters. But i want this…Is there a template to position these holes. If that is so i could grind the old square holes bigger with a dremel tool. Of course aluminum is tough material and smudges the grind tool.
Or i was thnking about a rotozip tool.
any tips…..

[quote post="7598"]Thanks for the info- I had never heard triplets counted out like that before.[/quote]

Yup…i teach music to high school/middle school kids so sometimes i have to get more creative. “straw-ber-ry” is a favorite for eighth note/quarter triplets.

[quote post="7598"]No ofense to anyone, but Ean,. really!? If people need to be told how to push a button so that it is on time to a beat,… well then they maybe should be told to look for another creative outlet.
Your either trying VERY hard to make EVRYONE a good DJ or trying to make this button masher DJ style go all the way.[/quote]

EVERYONE can improve on something, what may seem easy to you can be impossible to someone else and vice versa. Humility and confidence are what separates a good performer from a great one. Don’t confuse that for being an arrogant a-hole.

you know, I’m really missing the days where dj’s were using the whole body to dj and i dont mean bobbing furiously to the beat fist pumping and some times checking their email. What i really feel is missing from some performance digital dj’s is the THEATER. Big hand movements, lots of arm moves, maybe even a button push with your face. Like this performance from Cut Chemist, DJ Shadow and DJ Numark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQcyLMa716k

Mike Relm does a good job of this as well, with lots of action.
http://www.vidoemo.com/yvideo.php?dj-mike-relm-youtube-live=&i=MGpodTFmcWuRpMHhyRGM

I don’t know, Im an old schooler I miss the days when dj’s were needle dropping and switching or breaking records in the middle of their set and it was part of the show.
DJ Craze
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6382022157491295338#

@ SORCE

There is absolutely a time and place for theater and I agree that putting on a show is great for the crowd. There is also a time to really lock into the groove and play your instruments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_FFe7lmPuA

Different strokes for different folks. The techniques I am advocating here are the basis for many Jazz musicians (which is a personal taste thing). In that school of performance there is just a different mind set.

skratchcon 2000 was the shit! classic

@Yul: Thanks, but I think even with that you still have the great distance that the button travels before it hits. I like the tightness of the original buttons, just not the size.

Vhzrabzdy

Pretty nice, I’m just getting in to midi controllers, looking forword to applying this style to what I do now

@Beatsnatcher

The arcade button actually tiggers at 1 mm into its 3 mm total travel.

That was a great video! Thank you.

I also agree with Ean Golden on “time and place” when doing the theatrics. I’m more a fan of fist-pumping or riling up the crowd when I’m NOT doing some trick…and keeping my concentration on the trick/mix when I’m doing that. Some guys can do both, and I congratulate them. A lot of it though, like the crashing down on buttons or “dramatic knob twist” or especially faking actions on an empty channel is overdone.

Good video, just one note on the lingo. “Two fingered crab” is called a “Twiddle”. And a “Three finger crab” is just a “crab”, but referring to it as a three finger crab is fine. If you were to use four fingers, to be specific, you would actually want to say “four fingered crab” or people might assume you meant three fingers.

And some FYI. The crab scratch was invented by Qbert while he was practicing his twiddles and eating crepes over seas with Mix Master Mike. He decided to throw in an extra finger and they were both like “what was that?” Qbert kept doing it and they decided to call it the “Crepe scratch” because that is what they were eating. That did not really roll off the tongue, so they called it the “Crab Scratch”. And thats the story!

[quote comment="36076"]No ofense to anyone, but Ean,. really!? If people need to be told how to push a button so that it is on time to a beat,… well then they maybe should be told to look for another creative outlet.
.[/quote]

ha ha ha

an older guy i know who has two kids 6 and 9 did not have to be told have to mash buttons in traktor and make something pretty cool. So again those who don’t get it are going to stuggle because the bar is finally being raised past simple button mashing.

We’ve seen this through glitch mob having to expand to playing real instruments (well at least look like they are, they just playing drums while other drums are playing in ableton).

Still no one want to come to a show to watch someone just simply press buttons cause the word out about these software’s that do it all for ya.

Cheers

[quote comment="36099"]@ SORCE

There is absolutely a time and place for theater and I agree that putting on a show is great for the crowd. There is also a time to really lock into the groove and play your instruments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_FFe7lmPuA

Different strokes for different folks. The techniques I am advocating here are the basis for many Jazz musicians (which is a personal taste thing). In that school of performance there is just a different mind set.[/quote]

My buddy (who went to Northwestern to study Jazz) was just sitting with me watching the vid and we saw the jazz comment and could not resist. He has spent 15 years perfecting his technique. He agrees with me that this is one of the worst things to happen to music. Children are not going to buying drum kits but pads controllers because it is easy to make music. This will cause a decrease in the amount of people exposed to musical instruments.

As a music advocate you can’t think this is a good directions for music CAN YOU Ean???

[quote post="7598"]My buddy (who went to Northwestern to study Jazz) was just sitting with me watching the vid and we saw the jazz comment and could not resist. He has spent 15 years perfecting his technique. He agrees with me that this is one of the worst things to happen to music. Children are not going to buying drum kits but pads controllers because it is easy to make music. [/quote]

I find it difficult to believe that a musician serious enough about his studies to have spent fifteen years perfecting his technique would seriously believe that controllers used to manipulate sample-based music pose a threat to people’s interest in learning to play traditional instruments or styles.

Electronic music (whether original or manipulated by DJs) is its own musical discipline. My entire family are music educators, and after a lifetime of learning to play various traditional instruments, I enjoy the unique challenges and entirely different approach that electronic music offers to music creation. That said, a controller used to manipulate samples is its own type of musical instrument, just as a saxophone, piano, or trap set is. They do not exist in competition with one another; one makes sounds the others do not.

Jazz is jazz, jungle is jungle, rock is rock, classical is classical. The interests of young people will lead them to learn to play the instruments that make the sounds they want to make. The existence of newer, non-traditional instruments to make music does not replace the function of the instruments that came before them, they simply open the field to new options. The sampler didn’t replace the violin, and MIDI controllers will not replace the drum set.

Humanity has spent the vast bulk of its time on this rock making noises with whatever was handy at the time. Relax, fella. Jazz isn’t going anywhere until the people that want to hear it stop making it.

[quote comment="36270"]

My buddy (who went to Northwestern to study Jazz) was just sitting with me watching the vid and we saw the jazz comment and could not resist. He agrees with me that this is one of the worst things to happen to music. Children are not going to buying drum kits but pads controllers because it is easy to make music. This will cause a decrease in the amount of people exposed to musical instruments.

As a music advocate you can’t think this is a good directions for music CAN YOU Ean???[/quote]

For me, Jazz is not just a style of music but a state of mind- a manner of playing (anything). Qbert plays the turntable like miles played the sax. I personally aspire to create an electronic instrument that has the potential to be that expressive. We are not there yet.

No-I dont care if kids buy drums or pads. it simply doesn’t matter. Whats important is how they play them and the joy/inspiration it provides for them and others.

hello i need help pls am trying to buy a VCI-100 BUT AM JUST READ THAT I CANT USE IT WITH A LAPTOP WITH A INTEL I (I3,I5,I7 )
PROCESOR I HAVE A SONY VAIO WITH I5 INTEL THANK YOU FOR UR HELP

http://help.vestax.co.jp/en/detail.php?id=255&id_page_url=217

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